Western Union can leverage such physical presence to win this new innovative space. Anil Santhapuri - Director of Skills Solutions, Global Talent 28+ active Western Union coupons, discount codes & coupon codes for June 2021. [1] The first transcontinental telegraph was sent on October 24, 1861, from the Chief Justice of California to President Abraham Lincoln. For example, helping African countries develop official land registers could eliminate a huge barrier to investment and capital inflows (e.g., by resolving uncertain and disputed land titles). A doctor in London taps an app on her phone to transfer 500 pounds. Western Union has gained a comprehensive view of the customer while running the Data Cloud on AWS. Having to maintain two sets of procedures on-prem and cloud for 18 months to ensure business continuity is chief among them, while teams have had to escalate a company-wide transformation during a pandemic. Western Union and Beforepay Offer 'Send Now, Pay Later' Service to Consumers for International Money Transfers . Faced with numerous applications to deliver, the need to rapidly iterate customer experiences, and the steep learning curve for new Cloud DevOps toolchains, Western Union decided to evaluate low-code platforms. Business Unit Represents Approximately 7% of Company Revenue Divestiture Will Support Western Union's Strategic Focus on its Global Cross-Border Payments Platform and Digital Capabilities The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments, together with Goldfinch Partners, LLC ("Goldfinch"), a private equity firm investing in . [4] Form 10-K for the year ended December 2017, p.7. The gap between access and use is growing, with 56% of people in . Revenue from Western Union's digital money transfer services spiked from $600 million in 2019 to over $850 million in 2020. An advantage of Western Unions omnichannel approach is that it includes all customers, whether they are integrated or not in the financial system: the banked, the underbanked, and the unbanked. To address this new competitive landscape, Western Union sought an agility boost to accelerate innovation. UnionBank: Blazing Digital Trails in the Philippines and Beyond Western Union (NYSE: WU), a global leader in cross-border, cross-currency money movement and payments and Zain Cash, the award-winning mobile financia . People are asking us, Hey, can you come help me? Banco Santander Consumer Portugal Adopts OutSystems as its Digital Transformation Platform. We use OutSystems in multiple layers of our tech stack, says Tom. Western Union began a mission to transform the settlement platform with streamlined retail and digital cross-border money transfer operations to overcome the challenges and constraints of their legacy settlement systems. We wont bug you too much because thats more work for all of us. Others see blockchain as an opportunity to help emerging governments become efficient and transparent, for example, by serving as the official land title registration. Arab Emirates. For more than 170 years Western Union has been helping people send money all over the world. The new generation of customers, especially Millennials, want to find us in the ecosystem of messaging apps.. We position ourselves as creating opportunity for financial inclusion by bridging gaps in the financial services sector. Industry experts were also drafted in to create the army that was required for this technology mission. How did you navigate those early moments? Mohua Das Gupta - Head of Marketing, Tata CliQ. He also praises Snowflakes adaptability when it came to dealing with huge capacity increases. Thats changing. We developed the whole front-end for the app in less than four months., Western Union uses OutSystems for customer-facing apps, back office, and workflow solutions. Discover the latest software purchases and digital transformation initiatives being undertaken by Western Union and its business and technology executives. Western Union is a partner of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is a leading voice in the conversation of how to build a global payments ecosystem, which is stable and where remittances can be made much faster. The Western Union Foundation is a separate charitable corporation that is tax-exempt under 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, contributions to which are tax-deductible for US income tax purposes. Western Union operates in the increasingly competitive, rapidly changing payments sector, where new fintech players are changing how the market operates. Union Pacific, the railroad company that transports chemicals, coal, food, minerals and automobiles in and around 23 Western U.S. states, has had two workhorses that toiled tirelessly for the past . Women in Marketing: Executives who are building brand narratives Western Union Digital Banking is offered by Western Union International Bank GmbH. Singh estimates that the project has reduced how much it spends on talking to its customers by a quarter, while markedly improving this critical function. Its reach is staggering: present in more than 200 countries and territories, transacting in 130+ currencies, with approximately 150 million people having used Western Union to either send or receive funds over the last year. These strategies are paying off. The OutSystems platforms capabilities were immediately put to the test through 2021, as Western Union and its system integrator started development of its new digital banking app that includes a multicurrency bank account combined with money transfers, and other added benefits such as a Visa Platinum debit card. Western Union Promo Codes | 30% Off In March 2023 | Forbes Western Union is also focused on the global remittance market. 1 (March 1990), pp. Enterprise Technology Operations Center Manager. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. The way we approached it was to use the central WU Way team for capability building. [8]David Thomas, Beyond the Hype: What Blockchain could mean for Africa, African Business Magazine, Feb. 26, 2018. The center of excellence keeps things on track and makes sure we follow a framework and are tracking the results, so that we can measure the impact of the transformation across the whole organization. In 2011, Western Union opened an office in San Francisco to ramp up its digital operation. So its a real imperative across the top of the organization. Singh also sees huge potential in the use of blockchain for specific use cases within financial services and payments, for example, helping with the Know Your Customer (KYC) process that is important to stopping money laundering and fraud and eliminating many of the checks that currently hold up cross-border payments. Our research identified 10 attributes of an organizations data infrastructure that enable it to take full advantage of the data economy, the global supply and, Editors note: This is part of a series about the data economy. Guide for Suppliers, Select Experience in leading digital products from either the financial services, payment, or fintech industries. ; With the solution, Western Union launched a state-of-the-art digital . In Western and Central Africa, only 36% of the population has access to broadband connectivity. Theyll be there to help you stay on track or course correct when you have troubles. My team and I had thought of the future being digital, of course, but the pandemic really forced us to make it a reality for the business. We caught up with Mazzaferro to dive deeper into how the Data Cloud enables ongoing digital . Because if you dont have the right data, your applications will struggle to provide the right business outcomes and customer experiences. In addition to our digital banking app, there are at least 20 internal employee-facing apps that weve delivered that make work easier and more efficient for our employees., Asked what differences he sees in the development team, Tom says, With OutSystems, weve got a more cohesive and multi-talented development team because were using visual low-code development thats self-documenting. While WU is considered a global leader in their space, competitive insights and . A lot of our big data environment is still on-prem and the mission is to move that completely to the cloud by the end of the year. Harveer Singh, Chief Data Architect & Global Head of Engineering, reveals how the initiative will give the organisation the speed and agility it needs to . Western Unions typical customers are migrants seeking a better life not just for themselves, but for their families back home who rely on fund transfers to meet basic needs. Migrants, who typically are the link between cash economies underserved by financial institutions, and highly bancarized, digital economies, benefit from Western Unions unique ability to combine the physical and the digital. Western Union's cross-functional tech teams pushed out expanded digital options and real-time visibility on the status of its retail locations worldwide. As the figure below shows, five components are needed to execute an organization's digital transformation: 1. Leading fintech, Mambu, provides the platform and engine that drives the core of Western Union's new digital bank. To ensure those approaches were safe and secure, we partnered with governmental organizations to find new and secure ways to verify customers. There was a need to accelerate the process we wanted to undertake, I have that experience of transformation projects happening on a massive scale. Western Union's stock price continued to climb the week of April 12 reaching $25.89, compared to a low of $21.66 in January. of Use, Payment That makes it much easier to go into other areas of the organization and say, We did this in this part of the company. ", Looking back to why Western Union chose OutSystems, Tom says, We serve millions of customers in over 200 countries and territories, and we want to give them the best possible customer experience. Poland followed later in 2022, while plans are at hand to launch Italy by the end of the year. These are more tactical, day-to-day ways to implement lean across the organization. Three things were front-of-mind as we evaluated OutSystems, explains Tom Mazzaferro, Chief Data and Innovation Officer at Western Union. Singh is a proponent for a Central Bank Digital Currency, which he says is significantly different to the digital assets such as BitCoin and Ethereum, which can fluctuate wildly in value over short periods of time. Our goal was to build a new Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservicesthat would allow us to integratemany different systems quicklyboth internal and external vendors, explains Tom. de 2007 - actualidad16 aos 3 meses. Patrick Gauthier, CEO of Convera, formerly known as Western Union Business Solutions. Western Union Announces Agreement to Sell Western Union Business MFS Africa partners Western Union to broaden financial inclusion Western Union hiring Global Head, Customer Experience & Design in Business Application Services, Service Experience The EU is helping to boost Europe's digital capacities and create new opportunities for businesses and consumers while safeguarding basic rights. Consumers can 'Send Now, Pay Later' by borrowing up to AUD 2000 through Beforepay's wage-advance product on Western Union's digital channels. Now we are on track to achieve those gains and benefits that come with being more agile and being able to grow at scale, we can really begin to look forward and reap the rewards of the transformation.. Mazzaferro: Keep it simple. Others prefer to prepare a transaction online and then go to a retail location to pay cash. Rapid growth in technology was making it easy for international money transfers to take place online, Fellahi recalls. Western Union Uses AWS to Create Company-Wide Digital Transformation. Western Union is to shed its Business Solutions unit, with investment firms Goldfinch and Baupost set to acquire the business for $910 million in cash. The CDO needs to drive digital transformation by enabling data to power product development and the company. We go where our customers go, says Khalid Fellahi, senior vice president and general manager for Western Union Digital, based in San Francisco. 22 Companies Spearheading Digital Innovation in Their Industries in Think of Western Union, and its yellow placard advertising an agent location comes to mind. Its in our DNA to think about global operations because Western Union covers the world.. your next, Infosys The international roll-out continues to other countries at pace. How would this improve our agility, the need to deliver great digital experiences at scale, and the desire to use low-code across the whole stackfront-end, integration, and back-end core systems., Western Union became an OutSystems customer in November 2020. The Transformation Story of Western Digital - infosys.com Nov 2011 - Present11 years 5 months. One trend that has emerged as a result is the growing role of digital money transfers among people who may not otherwise use those services. Specifically, how Data, Editors note: This is part of a series of blogs about the data economy. My role was to bring all of these different teams together and instil a culture that recognised it wasnt just about how fast we were going, but also about the quality of the product were delivering.. Western Union is one of the largest digital money firms, uniquely positioned to connect the cash and digital worlds across platforms, devices, borders, and currencies. . The company, which has been in the money-transfer business since 1871, launched online transfers via WU.com in 2000 and got into mobile money transfers in 2007. Western Union must adapt to an increasingly mobile world: if Western Union doesn't develop low-cost mobile money transfers, Western Union won't be able to compete . People. The Foundation is supported by the Western Union Company, its employees, Agents, and business partners, working to support education and disaster relief efforts as pathways toward a better future. While the pace of change has been considerable, the leadership team at Western Union has been focused on implementing a large-scale technology transformation. Complete your profile for personalized recommendations, Managing Director, U.S. Financial Services at Google. Here is Swamy Sivasubramaniyan, Head of Financial Services and Settlement Platform for Western Union, discussing the digital transformation experience with Infosys and Oracle. The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. The Baupost Group is a $31 billion Boston-based investment firm. Western Union International Banks CEO Peter Bucher firmly believes you can drive successful, innovative business while creating a better world for the community you live in. After exceeding expectations in 2020 despite the outbreak of COVID-19, the world's largest currency exchange service Western Union looks set to exceed US$1 billion in total annual revenues for its digital business segment in 2021 a major milestone for the company and a first in the world of digital cross-border payments.. Western Union's shift toward digital shows little sign of relenting. Western Union Embraces Digital Transformation - BaselineMag.com Log in to help. Jaffin: Our company mission is to enable financial transfers between people anywhere and everywhere; we had a responsibility to continue to deliver on that. Their bread and butter business is charging hefty fees on remittances and their core advantage was a network of retail outlets and agents across the US and partners around the world to get cash from one family member to another. Digital transformation in the EU. The development speedand deployment easeprovided by OutSystems accelerates change and feedback cycles, which paves the way for continuous innovation. Technology or Operations transformation . And being with the people that are actually doing the work really helps the management get a better sense of where they can use their leadership and influence to make that process easier for the employee and better for the customer. Beyond the public health crisis, COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on personal finances, causing poverty levels and inequality to rise globally. Nduduzo Tshuma - Head of Information Technology & Digital Experts at TCS and Western Union share the trends that are affecting digital transformation in financial services. Western Union, MFS Africa Partner to Enable Money Transfers into Continue to partner with popular digital platforms to provide legacy C2C money transfer services. Digital transformation in the EU | News | European Parliament Specifically,. (PDF-165 KB) The transformation of a legacy company whose roots lie in the era of the telegraph involves more than just lean deployments and agile methodologies. The difference with OutSystems is that we can do that fast and at scale, deploying experiences that are fast to load, reliable, and secure. People who knew how a team or a group worked before can come in and see its night-and-day different. Discover how Santander Consumer Finance replaced 70% of their core IT systems in three years with OutSystems. Powering Digital Transformation: How Western Union Leverages the Data The role of CDO needs to encompass more than data management and data governance, more than even enabling the pipeline and managing the environments. The term is widely used in public-sector organizations to refer to modest initiatives such as putting services online or legacy modernization. We continue to experiment with the technology and time will tell if it offers a better alternative to traditional rails.. Western Union is trying to use Blockchain as an incremental or modular innovation, when in fact it could be an architectural orradical innovation (see chart below) introducing entirely new businesses that fit well into Western Unions existing capabilities. Digital transformation in the EUBenefitting people, the economy and the environment. He praises the vendor support and namechecks first AWS for enabling the organisation to quicken the pace of its procurement process and spin up workloads to the cloud faster than had originally been anticipated. 8 (Managing the Strategy Development Process). Governments pay close attention to cross-border money transfers, and heavily regulate these services to prevent fraud, tax evasion, and other criminal activities. Leaders across many industries and companies of all sizes report that one of their biggest challenges is siloed data. Reflecting on the transformation to-date, Singh is clear that it hasnt come without its challenges. First, for continuity of services. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. That created a need to act. Rapid iteration is a crucial capability for Western Union, especially when designing customer experiencesin over 200 countries with local customer and regulatory requirements. Reliable for over 170 years. Something we could take forward is a digital dollar, which we could make transferable all around the world with our vendors. - Access cash back rewards at the WU store. We built the Western Union Way team, or the WU Way team as we call it, with ten high-potential individuals from around the company. The Western Union Foundation is actively supporting NGOs that help refugees and migrants around the globe through education and financial literacy. Weve been able to increase the amount and frequency of relevant data we can share with our agents, and they have started to build new processes based on that. Singh was given autonomy to mould his teams, combining the skills already at Western Union with external talent, many of which were from a consulting background, resulting in a diverse and varied team, which he says proved invaluable. Today, our omnichannel platform places Western Union in a unique position where our physical network and our digital efforts combine to provide customers with a host of options to transfer money, whether in cash, card into billions of bank accounts, online, using our App or one of our 17 mobile wallet partners. These initiatives will likely change Western Unions operating model, therefore they must be fully supported by CEO Hikmet Ersek and should occupy most of his time. Singh was brought in to help facilitate that leap, drawing on his expertise with business transformations, technology management, data architecture and collaborative working, backed up by various consulting roles at Deloitte, IBM and Accenture. We offer consumers the choices they want, both for sending and receiving money, he stresses. Sydney Mahan, The First Transcontinental Telegram was sent to DC 155 Years Ago, Washingtonian.com, Oct. 25, 2016. Western Union, Chief Data Officer: Digital Transformation Initiatives Jaffin: We engaged with tech partners like Google almost immediately to refine our go-to-market strategy. As the transformation gets embedded into the organization, the businesses start to run their own agile deployments. Western Union Software Purchases and Digital Transformation Initiatives Furthermore, a chain of retail outlets is expensive. Once a customer notarises their documents, they can be stored in a safe location and distributed across the blockchain network, so any regulatory authority or government can access that information. [8]. Thank you for this great post, Hans. [12]These kind of digital initiatives are good pursuits for current operational leaders, since they represent incremental or modular innovations to Western Unions existing product offerings. Services, Consumer Ericsson will help accelerate Econet's digital transformation journey. Western Union has recently partnered with other digital platforms to expand its digital offerings. Western Union's digital banking platform is a complex ecosystem of partnerships from across the technology and fintech landscape. How Your Small Business Can Be Managed With The Right Databases, Why Businesses Must Focus on Introducing Technology in the Workplace. Today customers can commence their journey on our mobile App, pay for their transaction digitally or opt to pay cash from any of our participating Western Union retail locations, use wu.com or go directly to any of the 1,200 agent locations or Western Union-owned locations in Austria[i]. January 25, 2019 | Video. But you say its about more than technology? We believe in the work we do, why we do it, and who we hire to get it done. Chief Data and Innovation Officer, Western Union, Enterprise-grade scalability and security, Cloud-based IT architecture based on microservices. Now data is the driver and applications are being developed to handle that data and represent it to business stakeholders to make it consumable. His career span includes working with organizations like FIS, Western Union, HCL Technologies, CGI, Mahindra Satyam and iGate Global Solutions. Sub-Saharan Africa 3G and 4G mobile broadband coverage stands at 86% and 57% of the population, respectively. It is far more stable than that and can be used for near instant settlements across the board, while providing liquidity to Reserve Banks. We are also launching new products into the market, including a pilot for digital banking services in select markets in Europe and a revamped loyalty programme, which require us to capture data from our central warehouses to drive decision making, marketing and customer acquisition. With the blockchain environment, there may be value in the technology as it becomes more mature and efficient. - Earn My WU points. As weve done that, everyone has started to speak the same language, whether its talking about going to huddles, doing process confirmations, conducting one-on-one coaching, or maybe doing floor walks. Western Union charges high fees since they need to cover rent and labor overhead. Using OutSystems for customer-facing digital experiences, back office, and workflow solutions, Western Union launched new digital banking services in two countries in just 11 months. Automation reduces development toil, were more productive, so we dont need so many developers, and we dont end up with orphaned code when developers leave. And on our website, we added new support and wayfinding tools to ensure customers could quickly and easily access information. These are things like rewards and recognition, top-down innovation, and consequence management. To that end, Singh has built on an existing relationship to forge a highly valuable partnership with Salesforce and oversee the roll-out of its industry-leading Marketing Cloud. Product Director, United States Money Transfer. today more than 65% of Western Union's digital transactions originate on a mobile . [11]See generally Rebecca M. Henderson & Kim B. Clark, Architectural Innovation: The Reconfiguration of Existing Product Technologies and the Failure of Established Firms, Administrative Science Quarterly Vol. The Data Cloud is increasingly becoming a facilitator for digital transformation initiatives, and while there are many facets to that story, our customers often tell us how three critical elements play a central role: being able to access and share live data; being able to share data without having to move it; and the ability to securely access third-party data. The aim of this paper is to sketch a brief history of complex digital transformation of media and . Deloitte Collaborates With AWS to Put Enterprise-Class Banking This entails a leader or a manager being on the floor with people doing their day-to-day jobs, just observing the way they work. With a history of more than 170 years, the company has a presence in more than 200 countries and territories, connecting more than 120m people to one another and to the global economy, through cross-border money transfers in approximately 130 currencies. For more details about how Western Union went from 34 on-prem data warehouses to pursuing a multi-cloud strategy based on Snowflake, read our case study. Western Union launched its digital banking app in Germany and Romania in Spring 2022, following 11 months of iterative development. He shares his views on digital transformation and economic opportunities for all. Mazzaferro: Snowflake is enabling quite a bit around analytics, reporting, event triggers, and settlement across our card providers. Western Union Digital Banking 4+ - App Store Part of this agility drive involved Western Union migrating its legacy on-prem IT infrastructure to the Cloud.